Fencers win NCAAs; 3rd title in 6 years

By DON WAGNER
Collegian Sports Writer

It stands 24 inches high, is 14 inches wide and weighs 15 pounds. It is the NCAA trophy. It is the most coveted object in all of collegiate sport. And to this point in the sports season, no Penn State team has won it.

That is until yesterday, when the men's and women's fencing teams captured the team title at the NCAA fencing championships in South Bend, Ind.

For head coach Emmanuil Kaidanov the championship meant two things: It was his third team title in six years and he did not finished second. The latter is important because for the past three years his teams reached the finals with everyone expecting them to win the title, but only finished second.

"For the last two years we had the title within our grasp and just let it slip thorugh our fingers," Kaidanov said.

But the team could not be sure this title hadn't slipped away as in the past until the judges' results came in.

"There were a couple of mistakes in a couple of the bouts and the bout committee was going over the results and we were sitting in a circle thinking 'Oh my god, did we win?' " freshman epee fencer Polo Wagner said. "It was really nerve racking and finally, (assistant coach) Wes (Glon) came over and told us we had won and we went crazy."

The women and their leader, junior captain Olga Kalinovskaya, started competition in the tournament on Saturday night. By Sunday night, Kalinovskaya and her teammates had built a 28-point lead, and Kalinovskaya had won her third NCAA individual title in three years, earning All-America honors.

Also gaining All-America titles were foil teammate Sibyl Goldstein, who finished 10th, and freshman epee fencer Polo Wagner, who finished fifth.

On Monday, it was the men's turn. They picked up where the women left off, not missing a beat and placing all eight fencers into Tuesday's finals.

Kaidanov said he felt that it was the final round performance of the men's epee and foil teams -- which won nine of their final 12 bouts --that won the match.

In the finals, four men's fencers finished in the top 10 and earned All-America honors:

In epee, sophomore Greg Gregor placed third; in foil, senior Andy Gearhart took fifth; and in sabre, freshman Serge Lilov and sophomore Jason Levin finished third and fifth, respectively.

For Gearhart, it wasn't really his finish that counted. What was important to him that he went out a winner. As he stood in the University Park Airport clutching the championship trophy last night, it was obvious where his proiorities laid.

"My fifth-place finish doesn't even matter," he said. "I wanted the team championship. The individual championship didn't even matter."

The final standings had Penn State winning with 440 total points, and St. John's finishing second with 413 points. Defending champion Notre Dame took third with 370 points, while Yale finished fourth with 322, Princeton took fifth with 301 and Columbia placed sixth with 249.

After three years of coming so close only to watch the title slip away, Kaidanov simply summed up his third title:

"Finally," Kaidanov said emphatically, "we got it."